Show No Fear is the latest in a series featuring a team of Navy SEALs. This particular installment is set primarily in Colombia, where the hero and heroine pose as UN operatives/hostage negotiators. It had its moments, but on the whole was mostly an average read.

Lucy Donovan dated Gus Atwater when they were in college, and their relationship was pretty serious – until she deliberately broke it off to concentrate on her CIA career. She is shocked to run into him in (of all places) a warehouse in Venezuela. She’s in a fairly dicey situation, and he is part of a SEAL team sent to rescue her. She was held captive and beaten, and after she gets home she experiences Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since she’s used to being in the field, she finds herself frustrated by her new life as a desk jockey. When she’s finally called in for a new assignment, she can’t believe her bad luck; she’s to be partnered with Gus, and they have to pretend to be a married couple. Posing as UN hostage negotiators, they will infiltrate a camp of Colombian rebels (called the FARC) and relay information back to the CIA.

Gus is not all that thrilled about the assignment either – not because he doesn’t want to work with Lucy, but because he feels that her choices are often reckless. He never got over her, and he believes that her overly-daring exploits all stem from survivor guilt (she survived a terrorist bombing while all of her companions were killed). Since he can’t talk her out of the mission, he resolves to watch her back, and maybe even rekindle their old romance.

The plot is about what you would expect. The guys they are dealing with are mostly jerks, and one of them is really out to get Lucy and Gus. They discover that FARC has some powerful allies, and although they manage to relay that information to the CIA (Gus has a satellite phone hidden in his boot) their situation is precarious. Lucy and Gus hook up fairly early on, but Lucy all but refuses to talk about a future together. She doesn’t “do” dating; her life is the CIA. It takes true danger for Lucy to face her feelings and figure out what she really wants in life.

This book does a fairly good job of balancing romance and suspense, which can be hard to do. It really does include both in equal measure. That said, I found the suspense plot much more interesting than the romance. The location was different and interesting, and Lucy and Gus deal with a variety of people as well as the jungle elements. The very bad guy was a bit on the cartoonish side (I tried to figure out why Brockmann’s eeeevil baddies are a little more believable, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it). However, he was an exception; Melton makes an effort to explain the motivation of the rest of them. They’re on the “wrong” side, but they’re still people – and sometimes people who had little choice. I actually had less interest in Gus’s fellow SEALs, but as this appears to be the sixth book in the series, most of them just walked on briefly to get their face time.

Why didn’t the romance work as well? In a word: Lucy. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe everyone else just can’t get enough of heroes and heroines who just know that they “can’t have a relationship, because..” Because dad was a jerk. Because they have a demanding job. Because one woman or man treated them poorly, and so all women or men will be just like them. Because they have six fingers on their left hand. I don’t really care what their excuses are; I’m just sick of hearing about them. In real life, who is like this? Practically no one. This book is fairly unique in that it’s the heroine who is determined to avoid romantic entanglements; usually it’s a hero thing. I dislike it in either party, so I lost patience with Lucy quickly. I had no real problems with Gus (though I did wonder what, exactly, he saw in Lucy).

So, Show No Fear is about average. Fairly engaging suspense, fairly uninteresting romance. If you’ve read about the rest of the SEAL team, you might be motivated to read this one, but otherwise I’d consider it okay but skippable.